Day 1 Report

Food report for day one!

The Silk creamer was good in my coffee. Not as good as my usual International Delight, but I probably need to scale back on my creamer anyway.  I’ve gotten enough comments like “would you like a little coffee with your cream?” ;-)

 I had soy yogurt for breakfast with homemade strawberry syrup – it was a bit too sweet, so I can probably omit the extra sugar next time. Francisco made a tofu scramble for his breakfast, and I had it for lunch. It had tofu, onions, garlic, spinach, and mushrooms.  It was pretty good. He cooked it in the morning while I was working out in the living room – I swear, my eyes felt sensitive all day from that onion and garlic smell filling the house.  I had vegan apple pie to snack on and dinner was extra yummy. 



Trader Joe's Mandarin Orange Chik'n



I had picked up some Vegan Chicken-less Mandarin Orange Morsels the last time I was at Trader Joe’s, and these are super yummy.

Inspired by this product, dinner was Asian-inspired with Vegetable Spring Rolls, brown rice, and baby broccoli. 



Day 1 Dinner



I had actually just tried orange chik’n for the first time ever recently when I went to Vegan Mania in Chicago. The food there was superb; it would be awesome to have that kind of restaurant variety in my current town.  Sadly, there aren’t any vegetarian restaurants here and definitely not a vegan one. Needless to say, I don’t expect to go out to eat very often, if at all, in the next few weeks. Unless I end up making a trip up to Chicago.  :-P

Vegan Rules

At the heart of things, the rules are simple. No animal products. No beef, poultry, fish, eggs, gelatin, milk, cheese, etc. Vegans usually don’t eat honey either.  As I mentioned in the first vegan post, veganism is more of a philosophy than a diet. There are some products that don’t actually contain animal by-products, but vegans don’t use these unless it is clear that the company supports animal welfare and doesn’t use animal testing. So, you may have seen vegan cosmetics, clothing, accessories, etc. 

I bought vegan vitamins in anticipation of this – that and I’ve found most other vitamins contain gelatin, which even as a vegetarian, I shouldn’t eat.  I actually just recently had a conversation with someone about gelatin as I was lamenting not being able to eat marshmallows and Jello and I had to Wikipedia it to be able to describe what it is and why I shouldn’t eat it.  Gelatin is a mixture “produced by partial hydrolysis of collagen extracted from the skin, boiled crushed horn, hoof and bones, connective tissues, organs and some intestines of animals such as domesticated cattle, chicken, horses, and pigs.”

I also just recently learned that many bread products contain an amino acid called L-cysteine, which is used as a dough conditioner (http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/faqingredients.htm#cystine).  This is derived from human hair or duck feathers as well as pigs’ bristles and hooves. The most common source used to be human hair found on the floors of Chinese barbershops; today it is derived from Chinese duck feathers 80% of the time.  Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in the bread aisle this weekend and had to put back several loaves of bread after spotting that ingredient on the label. 

I also just learned today that Advil is not vegan.  Someone had apparently contacted the company about this and posted this message in a blog: “Advil is not considered a vegan product. Advil® tablets and caplets contain stearic acid which is used as an inactive ingredient and is derived from a bovine source.” I knew I should have checked into this one sooner since I tend to get a headache at least once a week. I’ve been scouring Google and Drugstore.com to find an alternative, and so far I am coming up empty-handed. The good news is that I don’t have a headache yet…but I’ll probably get one soon if I keep scrolling through all these results and seeing ingredients like stearic acid and magnesium stearate and of course gelatin is a common one.  So…I may have to make pain relievers a possible exception if I wind up with a headache and haven’t found anything more vegan-appropriate.  Ugh.

But my emphasis will be on following a vegan diet as I don’t have the time or funding to replace my wardrobe and sort through all of my other accoutrements. I would venture to say that probably the majority of my belongings are probably not vegan-friendly.  Sadly enough.   However, I will commit to not purchasing any new household items that aren’t vegan during this time period.  I imagine that most vegan-converts don’t just completely dump out the contents of their home and go on a massive shopping spree to replace everything, so this approach seems fair enough. 

So, in summary, no purchasing or consuming animal products or by-products! 

Day 0





Saturday morning, we perused a cookbook to get recipe ideas for the coming week. I had happened to buy a vegan cookbook a couple years ago called Vegan with a Vengeance, and we’ve already found a few winners in there (like the Fronch Toast, which is yum-tastic). 

 

Cookbook of choice for the next three weeks.



  We compiled a shopping list and ventured out for first grocery stop at Sunspot. We came back with a pretty decent selection including vegan mac and cheese, yogurt, shredded and wedge cheese, sandwich slices, and vegan pizza.  They didn’t have vegan coffee creamer, so I was starting to get concerned.  It was a pricey grocery-run though, so we went to Target to get the majority of the stuff.  I decided to just buy some coffee syrup and almond milk to put in my coffee.

Sunspot groceries.

 

Sunday morning, I did a test run with the coffee, and it was not good at all.  I was starting to think that going vegan was going to entail giving up coffee as well.  Yikes! But then Francisco had to run out to Payless to get the rest of the produce, since that’s almost always the most affordable store for those items, and voila, he came home with Silk (soy) coffee creamer. Yay!  I was thrilled to know that Payless carried this product.  It’s the small victories obviously…



Coffee creamer!



 We snuck in some time for me to get my scary movie fix and went to see Paranormal Activity 4 and over-indulged at the Indian buffet since we know we won’t be seeing the likes of that place during this 3-week lifestyle change. Our big hoorah meal ended up being at Olive Garden Sunday afternoon – we had the Smoked Mozzarella Fonduta, the Five Cheese Ziti al Forno, and Pumpkin Cheesecake for dessert. 

Olive Garden
Appetizer & Entree

Olive Garden Pumpkin Cheesecake

We baked a vegan apple pie Sunday night to have as dessert throughout the week. And even though I was stuffed from all the food at OG, I had to give it a try and it was pretty yum!



Vegan Apple Pie

Experiment #2

It’s been over a year since my last experiment, so it’s about time to take on another lifestyle challenge. While it wasn’t my intent to make this all about food, it seems like those kinds of changes make the most sense.  Although I’m always open to suggestions!  Plus, I just finished another A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically, and he was listed as a source of inspiration in my first blog entry about trying different lifestyles. 

So, for three weeks, I have decided to go vegan.  I have thought about this for a while, and I’m very interested and excited to try a vegan diet…although I don’t think it would be something I would be committed to long-term. I definitely love cheese too much!

Some people might think this will be easy for me. I have been a vegetarian for the majority of my life after all.  While I concede that my lifestyle would inherently be closer to a vegan’s than an omnivore’s, veganism and vegetarianism are still very different lifestyles.  Eliminating all animal products from your diet is a huge step – especially for me.  I usually have yogurt for breakfast, and lunch and dinner almost invariably have some kind of cheese. But honestly, taking a look at my diet, becoming vegan could do me a world of good. 

Last week, I ate pizza for four days in a row.  Three different pizzas. It started on Thursday night when I went to Uncorked, the local wine bar, with a friend. I had the Wild Mushroom Artisan Pizza along with the Cheese Fondue. I took the majority of the pizza home with me as leftovers since the fondue proved to be plenty filling, not to mention the three free samples of wine and resulting two glasses of wine. ;-)  Friday, I finished that off, plus Francisco popped a Red Baron frozen pizza into the oven to complement my leftovers and give him leftovers for the next day since I planned to be out. Saturday, I went to spend the day in Indianapolis with a friend.  For dinner, we ended up ordering pizza from Bazbeaux, which has gourmet pizza toppings. I took the leftovers home with me, so guess what I ate Sunday? 

So, vegan vs. vegetarian…what’s the difference? A vegetarian diet excludes all meat, including slaughter by-products, fish, and poultry. There are several variations of the diet, probably the most common being lacto-ovo-vegetarians, who eat eggs and dairy products.  As I mentioned, I love cheese – and I also eat eggs – so I would fall into this category.  Veganism is more of a philosophy, and vegans strive to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose.  On top of the items that vegetarians avoid, vegans won’t consume milk, eggs, or any food that is derived from animals.

Last weekend, while in Indy, I stopped at Trader Joe’s to stock up on some vegan options. I ran out of time and didn’t make it to Whole Foods, which was going to be the main stock-up store. So, I have a few essentials, but I’m going to have to make a grocery run this weekend to get started on the right foot.  Sunspot Natural Market is a local store I intend to check out; I’m really hoping they have vegan coffee creamer or I’m going to have to get creative with my morning coffee next week.  The nearest Whole Foods is about 70 miles away, which is a mild inconvenience. :-P

I think the plan is that I will start on Monday, so I plan to have a really cheesy weekend!  

And the Results are In!

Three weeks later, or 46,105.28 calories and $357.99 later to be exact, the end of the first phase of this experiment is over.  That comes out to less than a penny per calorie, by the way!  So, how did I do?

Weight change was insubstantial. I weighed in approximately every three days, and there was a cumulative change of -0.91%. Interval changes ranged from -1.99% to +2.81%.  So, I guess that goes to show that you can eat exclusively at restaurants and not see a huge change in your weight! (You may see a huge change in your bank account though!) 

So, over the course of three weeks, we visited 41 different restaurants.  It comes as no surprise that the most calories were consumed from Starbuck's - a grand total of 6,579. Number two on the list was Ryan's - I had estimated the calories consumed at that buffet to be about 2,500, so it could be higher or lower than that...but probably not higher than Starbuck's!  Number three is Einstein Bros Bagels, four is Scotty's Brewhouse, and five is good ol' Mickey D's. 

Calorie intake by day ranged from 1,363 calories on day 3 (wow, that's low!) to 3,037 on day 20.  The high day is nearly entirely attributable to the Loaded Fries we shared as an appetizer at Scotty's Brewhouse. 2,836 calories in a full order!

So, where did the $357.99 go? Probably the places we ate the most calories at, right? Well, Starbucks is number one on this list - $91.62.  The rest are all a far cry from that... Next is Einstein Bagel ($17.70), La Scala ($16.75), The Cheesecake Factory ($15.00), and McDonald's rounds out the top five again ($14.93).  Keep in mind that these prices were apportioned out to represent only my spending. Francisco was participating in this experiment as well. We use https://www.mint.com/ to track our spending and budgets. If I run a query on our Mint records to look at our restaurant spending over the course of this experiment, the total that comes back is $613.55, and this only includes credit card transactions up to September 26th.  So, exclusively eating in restaurants...very, very pricey!! Definitely caused us to go over our monthly food budget. 

My most expensive day was Day 2, which included a pricey visit to La Scala - total for the day was $26.54.  Cheapest day was Day 7 at $6.10 - everything but breakfast was leftovers. 

Meijer produce section - a sight to behold!

We had breakfast for dinner last night at Bob Evan's - our last meal to wrap up the experiment. Then we stopped at Meijer to re-stock on some groceries. I will miss my morning Starbuck's Skinny Caramel Macchiato, and yeah, I will miss the convenience of having someone else prepare all our food for us. But I am looking forward to trying some new recipes and having lazy weekend mornings again!  And just in time, too...a co-worker brought in homemade apple crisp that I wouldn't have been able to eat just a day before...and Friday is Goodie Day at work....sooo bring on the homemade food!   

21 Days Later

21 days later...am I any wiser?  I mean, what was the point of this thing anyway, right? Well, I did learn a few things, but I really only attempted it as a personal challenge so I consider it a goal accomplished. I will weigh in with the final statistics later but for now, what are the take-away lessons?





Scotty's Brewhouse Loaded Fries:
Not a healthy appetizer ;-)


1. Restaurant portions are OUTRAGEOUS. Even something as simple as, say, a Homewrecker Burrito from Moe's has 870 CALORIES. And of course that always comes with a side of chips and people help themselves to the salsa bar, easily tacking on another 350 calories.  That's 1,200 calories in one meal!  We went to Moe's twice during this experiment - both times on a Monday when they have their $5.99 special - you get any burrito, chips, and a drink.  Both times we either shared the burrito or ate half and saved our other half for lunch the next day, bringing our total calorie intake to a much more tolerable 435. Again, that's just for the burrito.  So, I do highly advocate sharing a meal if you're going out to eat or at least planning on bringing leftovers home to have for a meal later on. 
2. Who needs drinks? Besides my morning coffee, you will not find a lot of beverages in my food journal for this experiment. There were a couple of glasses of wine and a smoothie or two, but those kinds of recordings were much more the exception than the norm. It is far too easy for people to overlook the calories in the drinks that come with their meals. It is a rare occasion that I go out to eat and have a beverage with my meal that isn't water. Heck, I know I'm going to be eating enough food as it is - I don't need any sneaky little calories in my beverage of choice. :-P 
3.  No miscellaneous snacking! One of the consequences of eating exclusively at restaurants is it eliminates the prospect of mindless snacking. It is no longer as simple as reaching into your junk food drawer when you're hungry or grabbing a couple of cookies from the kitchen. If you want food, you have to go out and get it - and sometimes that inconvenience factor is enough of a deterrent.  This was especially a big factor for Francisco as he realized just how much mindless snacking he was doing just out of boredom.
4. Planning is everything. There were days that I couldn't go out for lunch, so it was essential to plan the day ahead to make sure whatever I ordered left enough to eat the next day. Normally, I would always keep a "back-up lunch" in the freezer at work and I have my junk food drawer stocked if I need an additional snack. Without those options, planning become essential to make sure I had something to eat when I needed it. Of course, that's an essential lesson for every day life: Reese's does not make a healthy snack. ;-) 

I'm sure there are other things I realized - or ideas that were further cemented - over the course of this experiment, but this is a quick summary. There is just one final meal tonight, and the experiment will be over!  Time to re-stock the fridge!

A Weekend of Good Eats

Maza: Baked Goat Cheese
and Sambousek

Tomorrow wraps up the experiment. With the impending end, we made sure to have a weekend filled with good eats! Actually, Thursday deserves a mention in that regard as well. We stopped at Maza after work...one of the more unique restaurants in town. Its name draws from "mezze" in Lebanon/Turkey, "tapas" in spain, and "antipasti" in Italy, so its specialty is small dishes served as appetizers.  We ordered the Baked Goat Cheese, which we had tried before and enjoyed, and the Sambousek, a Lebanese dish.  Everything was very enjoyable, and we managed to squeeze in dessert, a delectable bread pudding.  My review for Maza is here: http://www.yelp.com/biz/maza-west-lafayette#hrid:CtTabJ_rvBtut0zIX14t8w/src:self.

Maza: Bread Pudding



Friday dinners nearly always end up being pizza in some variation. This Friday was a little different; we ended up stopping at a pizza place we had ordered from once before. The pizza we had had there was pretty unremarkable, but we decided to dine in and give them another shot. We shared a California sub, which came with spinach and feta and an order of cheese sticks. It was fairly cheap - around $11 for the both of us - and the food was really good.



Greyhouse Blueberry Ricotta Crepe

 



Jarocho's

Our plans got rained out Saturday, so we found ourselves at Greyhouse Coffee to start our day where we shared a Blueberry Ricotta crepe and I had a Creme Brulee latte. Usually their coffee is a little too bitter for me, but this time I asked for an extra shot of caramel, and it made a world of difference. This meal left us surprisingly full for most of the day, until we headed over to Jarocho's mid-afternoon for lunch. This was a fairly new Mexican restaurant in town - they had a rather small menu, but Francisco was a big fan of them. He pretty much dislikes every single other Mexican restaurant in town, so that's a plus.  

Taj Mahal lunch buffet plate

Taj Mahal dessert buffet plate

Sunday, we grabbed a quick breakfast at Starbuck's before heading over to the movie theater to catch an early showing of "Straw Dogs".  Afterwards, I finally relented to going to an Indian buffet with Francisco, and we headed over to Taj Mahal. Now, the nice thing about Indian buffets is I always feel like I eat less food than I would at a traditional buffet. But the not-so-nice thing is that I'm not terribly familiar with Indian food, so I couldn't even begin to gauge the calorie-count.  I made two trips each to the lunch table and dessert table. The main staple of the buffet is a white rice, and there are several different curry options to layer over the rice. All but two of them were vegetarian - definitely one of my favorite things about Indian food. There were only two options at the dessert buffet table. Francisco and I were really looking forward to the Gulab Jamun, which are deep-fried milk balls in a sugar syrup.  They are possibly the best dessert ever. We were dismayed to find that they didn't have those on the buffet. Instead we had rice pudding and some other kind of dessert that tasted similar to Gulab Jamun, but we're not quite sure what it is. I must say, Indian food is not the most aesthetically pleasing but it is certainly anything but bland. Our meal was very flavorful and yummy. While the lunch offerings can be a bit spicy, the dessert is usually milk-based, so it helps to soothe the palate.

Soon it's back to grocery lists and recipe planning and treks up and down supermarket aisles...I'm kind of looking forward to it. :-)